Service-Quality Criteria of Web Recruiters: A Content Analysis

Despite the widespread use of ICT systems in e-recruiting services, there is little research on how recruiters judge the quality of different e-recruiting services. We explore, from the recruiters´ perspective, staffing quality improvements and limitations since beginning to use e-recruiting services, the most frequent requests emailed by recruiters to an external e-recruiting service, and the criteria recruiters associate with high e-service quality and how e-service quality can be enhanced. We interviewed 73 recruiters and content-analyzed a large data set of e-mail communications between recruiters and service personnel of an e-recruiting portal for university graduates. Surprisingly, recruiters judge the quality of e-recruiting services primarily by the quantity and not necessarily on the quality of applications, high number of visits to the website, clicks on published job ads, page impressions, successful placements, the size of the applicant pool, and the quality of cooperation with other media channels so as to reach more applicants.